As soon as the scooter had drifted to a complete halt, Rodrigo grappled it to the missile framework so that the two formed a rigid structure. That took only seconds; he had already chosen his tools, and was out of the pilot’s seat at once, only slightly hampered by the stiffness of his heavy-insulation suit.
The first thing he found himself inspecting was a small metal plate bearing the inscription:
Rodrigo suspected that, in a very few minutes, Mr. Jones might be rather busy.
The heavy wire-cutters made short work of the cable. As the fist strands parted, Rodrigo gave scarcely a thought to the fires of hell that were pent up only centimetres away; if his actions triggered them, he would never know.
He glanced again at his watch; this had taken less than a minute, which meant that he was on schedule. Now for the back-up cable—and then he could head for home, in full view of the furious and frustrated Hermians.
He was just beginning to work on the second cable assembly when he felt a faint vibration in the metal he was touching. Startled, he looked back along the body of the missile.
The characteristic blue-violet glow of a plasma thruster in action was hovering round one of the attitude control jets. The bomb was preparing to move. The message from Mercury was brief, and devastating. It arrived two minutes after Rodrigo had disappeared around the edge of Rama.
COMMANDER ENDEAVOUR FROM MERCURY SPACE CONTROL, INFERNO WEST.
YOU HAVE ONE HOUR FROM RECEIPT OF THIS MESSAGE TO LEAVE VICINITY OF RAMA. SUGGEST YOU PROCEED MAXIMUM ACCELERATION ALONG SPIN AXIS.
REQUEST ACKNOWLEDGEMENT.
MESSAGE ENDS.
Norton read it with sheer disbelief, then anger. He felt a childish impulse to radio back that all his crew were inside Rama, and it would take hours to get everyone out. But that would achieve nothing—except perhaps to test the will and nerve of the Hermians.
And why, several days before perihelion, had they decided to act? He wondered if the mounting pressure of public opinion was becoming too great, and they decided to present the rest of the human race with a fait accompli. It seemed an unlikely explanation; such sensitivity would have been uncharacteristic.
There was no way in which he could recall Rodrigo, for the scooter was now in the radio shadow of Rama and would be out of contact until they were in line of sight again. That would not be until the mission was completed—or had failed.
He would have to wait it out; there was still plenty of time—a full fifty minutes. Meanwhile, he had decided on the most effective answer to Mercury.
He would ignore the message completely, and see what the Hermians did next. Rodrigo’s first sensation, when the bomb started to move, was not one of physical fear; it was something much more devastating. He believed that the universe operated according to strict laws, which not even God Himself could disobey—much less the Hermians. No message could travel faster than light; he was five minutes ahead of anything that Mercury could do.
This could only be a coincidence—fantastic, and perhaps deadly, but no more than that. By chance, a control signal must have been sent to the bomb at about the time he was leaving Endeavour; while he was travelling fifty kilometres, it had covered eighty million.
Or perhaps this was only an automatic change of attitude, to counter overheating somewhere in the vehicle. There were places where the skin temperature approached fifteen hundred degrees, and Rodrigo had been very careful to keep in the shadows as far as possible.
A second thruster started to fire, checking the spin given by the first. No, this was not a mere thermal adjustment. The bomb was re-orientating itself, to point towards…
Useless to wonder why this was happening at this precise moment in time. There was one thing in his favour; the missile was a low-acceleration device. A tenth of a gee was the most that it could manage. He could hang on.
He checked the grapples attaching the scooter to the bomb framework, and re-checked the safety line on his own suit. A cold anger was growing in his mind, adding to his determination. Did this manoeuvre mean that the Hermians were going to explode the bomb without warning, giving Endeavour no chance to escape? That seemed incredible—an act not only of brutality but of folly, calculated to turn the rest of the solar system against them. And what would have made them ignore the solemn promise of their own Ambassador?
Whatever their plan, they would not get away with it.
The second message from Mercury was identical with the first, and arrived ten minutes later. So they had extended the deadline—Norton still had one hour. And they had obviously waited until a reply from Endeavour could have reached them before calling him again.
Now there was another factor; by this time they must have seen Rodrigo, and would have had several minutes in which to take action. Their instructions could already be on the way. They could arrive at any second.
He should be preparing to leave. At any moment, the sky-filling bulk of Rama might become incandescent along the edges, blazing with a transient glory that would far outshine the sun.
When the main thrust came on, Rodrigo was securely anchored. Only twenty seconds later, it cut off again. He did a quick mental calculation; the delta vee could not have been more than fifteen kilometres an hour. The bomb would take over an hour to reach Rama; perhaps it was only moving in close to get a quicker reaction. If so, that was a wise precaution; but the Hermians had left it too late.
Rodrigo glanced at his watch, though by now he was almost aware of the time without having to check. On Mercury, they would now be seeing him heading purposefully towards the bomb, and less than two kilometres away from it. They could have no doubt of his intentions, and would be wondering if he had already carried them out.
The second set of cables went as easily as the first; like any good workman, Rodrigo had chosen his tools well. The bomb was disarmed; or, to be more accurate, it could no longer be detonated by remote command.
Yet there was one other possibility, and he could not afford to ignore it. There were no external contact fuses, but there might be internal ones, armed by the shock of impact. The Hermians still had control over their vehicle’s movements, and could crash it into Rama whenever they wished. Rodrigo’s work was not yet completely finished.
Five minutes from now, in that control room somewhere on Mercury, they would see him crawling back along the exterior of the missile, carrying the modestly-sized wire-cutters that had neutralized the mightiest weapon ever built by man. He was almost tempted to wave at the camera, but decided that it would seem undignified; after all, he was making history, and millions would watch this scene in the years to come. Unless, of course, the Hermians destroyed the recording in a fit of pique; he would hardly blame them.
He reached the mounting of the long-range antenna, and drifted hand-over-hand along it to the big dish. His faithful cutters made short work of the multiplex feed system, chewing up cables and laser wave guides alike. When he made the last snip, the antenna started to swing slowly around; the unexpected movement took him by surprise, until he realized that he had destroyed its automatic lock on Mercury. Just five minutes from now, the Hermians would lose all contact with their servant. Not only was it impotent; now it was blind and deaf.
Rodrigo climbed slowly back to the scooter, released the shackles, and swung it round until the forward bumpers were pressing against the missile, as close as possible to its centre of mass. He brought thrust up to full power, and held it there for twenty seconds.